“There are vigilantes out there who feel emboldened because of it. They try to break up meetings and stop Jews who want to debate Israel.”
According to FSOI’s website, two of its meetings in the past six months were disrupted by pro-Israel activists.
Mr Kuper, who was a founding member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, said: “A meeting at the House of Commons was broken up by people who intimidated other Jews. We haven’t asked the Community Security Trust to protect these sorts of meetings, but Jews should feel safe enough to discuss these things when we want to.”
FSOI said the Commons event in December had been intended to give “rarely heard Jewish voices a platform from which to explain that, while the kind of anti-Jewish hatred that led to the obscenity of the Holocaust had to be confronted head on, alleging that criticism of Israel is necessarily antisemitic is counterproductive”.
Mr Kuper claimed that at another event held in London last November, hard-left Jews who criticised Israel were called “kapos” - the label applied to Jews who helped the Nazis run death camps.
